28 Oscar Wilde Quotes on Art

Oscar Wilde quotes on art

4. Over the piano was printed a notice: Please do not shoot the pianist. He is doing his best.

17. Art finds her own perfection within, and not outside of herself. She is not to be judged by any external standard of resemblance. She is a veil, rather than a mirror.

18. All art is immoral.

27. Life imitates art far more than art imitates Life.

29. His style is chaos illumined by flashes of lightning.

30. No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.

31. Art persists, it timelessly continues.

39. It is through art, and through art only, that we can realize our perfection; through art and art only that we can shield ourselves from the sordid perils of actual existence.

43. The artist is the creator of beautiful things. To reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim.

44. The critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things. The highest, as the lowest, form of criticism is a mode of autobiography.

47. The nineteenth century dislike of Realism is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass. The nineteenth century dislike of Romanticism is the rage of Caliban not seeing his own face in a glass.

48. The moral life of man forms part of the subject-matter of the artist, but the morality of art consists in the perfect use of an imperfect medium.

49. No artist desires to prove anything. Even things that are true can be proved.

51. All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril. Those who read the symbol do so at their peril. It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors. Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex, and vital.

52. We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely. All art is quite useless.

53. All bad art is the result of good intentions.

62. Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter. The sitter is merely the accident, the occasion. It is not he who is revealed by the painter; it is rather the painter who, on the coloured canvas, reveals himself.

71. Beauty is a form of genius - is higher, indeed, than genius, as it needs no explanation.

87. Her eyes caught the melody and echoed it in radiance, then closed for a moment, as though to hide their secret. When they opened, the mist of a dream had passed across them.

125. Art is the only serious thing in the world. And the artist is the only person who is never serious.

201. Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known.

202. Now art should never try to be popular. The public should try to make itself artistic.

208. It is sweet to dance to violins When Love and Life are fair: To dance to flutes, to dance to lutes Is delicate and rare: But it is not sweet with nimble feet To dance upon the air!

221. We are the zanies of sorrow. We are clowns whose hearts are broken.

238. Morality, like art, means drawing a line someplace.

243. No, I've never cared for his work. Too scented.

244. An Assyrian wax statue, effeminate, but with the vitality of twenty men.

246. What has Oscar in common with Art? except that he dines at our tables and picks from our platter the plums for the puddings he peddles in the provinces.